Originally Posted by
lostdoll
Someone find bannie! I was looking at Southampton Solent, which did a good range of Advertising type courses, but its like...near the very bottom of the good university list. Probably because its a new uni and stuff.
Solent hasn't got a great reputation mainly because it's one of the old polytechnic universities and so in that respect tends to offer more vocational, less academic courses. The comparison I suppose is the University of Bristol compared to the University of the West of England (UWE) - it's two universities in the same city, but one is very academic with a lot of prestige and heritage (Bristol) and the other is the polytechnic recently upgraded to a uni, so it offers less academic courses (UWE).
If you're thinking about choosing a uni, look at the courses they offer (work out if you'd like to study them, how they compare to other courses offered at other universities - the course is what sold me my university!), and visit the universities and go to the open days. Try and get a feel for the place - is it a campus or city university? Which do you prefer?
Try and get a feel for the department; what's it like, could you imagine yourself going there? Do you like the lecturers? Try going to a taster lecture if you can, sometimes they run them during open days and that can be a good feel for if the place and the course is right for you. What are the people like?
It's also worth finding out what else the university offers - sports teams, extra-curricular activities, what the social life is like (both in the city and the union). What's the accommodation like?
I guess another thing to think about is how close you want to be to home. A friend of mine got a map of England, decided she wasn't going anywhere north of Liverpool or anywhere closer than 2 hours driving to home ... which obviously narrows down your choices as well!!
Hope this helps a little and good luck with it all! :)
Oh - and I'm going to the University of Bristol to study Engineering Design.
Em x
